Real-time business gives companies the ability to monitor and react to changes and address problems as they occur. But no matter how sophisticated their information-gathering and data mining systems are, they're still playing catch-up. In The Power to Predict, Ranadive forecasts the next step in achieving breakthrough business performance, a new approach he calls Predictive Business: the ability to anticipate business problems and opportunities and to act preemptively. Predictive Business allows companies to take real-time information, correlate it with historical patterns, and recognize events that hold tremendous profit potential.

In an effort to stay ahead of the curve, a handful of companies have been quietly making the transition from reactive organizations to proactive, and are well-suited for a customer-centric business paradigm. Ranadive takes us inside a number of these companies—including Amazon, Pirelli, Harrah's, E. & J. Gallo, Wal-Mart, and 7-Eleven—to show how they are making that transition, and are able to anticipate customer needs and be ready satisfy them the minute they emerge; and be prepared for sudden events such as a power outage, spikes in demand for a product or service, logistic issues due to changing weather patterns, or evolving customer requirements.